Altruistic or interested?

In a short piece published in the Taipei Times on Feb. 27 I raise the question as to whether the segment of US academia that has “seized” the Taiwan Strait issue is doing this out of a fundamental belief in the value of democracy or rather for more obscure reasons, such as the belief (originating from that same sector) that no power should ever be allowed to challenge the US militarily, which in the present case would mean using Taiwan as part of a strategy to encircle and contain China.

Is the militarization of the conflict — selling Taiwan,* Australia, Japan more US-made weapons, or encouraging those states to further develop their defense trade industries — the answer to the problem, or should there be more focus, perhaps by another segment of the US diplomatic/defense/intelligence/academic sector, on diminishing Beijing’s perception that all help to Taiwan is but a cynical use of the terms democracy or freedom to contain it, especially when those very same states openly chastise Taipei for seeking to hold a referendum on joining the United Nations?

Arguably, as some have pointed out in response to my article (many thanks for that), the “hawkish” or “conservative” think tanks are no monoliths, and even among those circles there is disagreement on the road taken when Taiwan is concerned. Which is a good thing. Nevertheless, given the reputation of those think tanks in the wake of the disaster in Iraq and the fact that as with every institution dissent among the ranks will unlikely lead to organizational reorientation or policy change, governments such as Beijing that are on the receiving end of the policies promoted my American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and others may be excused for looking at their intentions with wariness, if not paranoia.

As I argue, a balance of “left” and “right” think tanks fighting for Taiwan would present Beijing with a unified front that perhaps would make it a little more hesitant to rattle the saber at Taipei for wanting to retain its democratic system. (Which raises the important question, Why hasn't the American "left," with a few exceptions, shown an equal interest in safeguarding Taiwan's interests?)

Readers can access the full article, titled “But are they really friends of Taiwan?,” by clicking here.

* By means of reference, Canada spends approximately C$13 billion, or 1.1 percent of its GDP on defense, to Taiwan's C$10.5 billion, or 2.6 percent of GDP. Canada therefore spends C$1,302 per square kilometer, while Taiwan spends C$291,800 per square km on defense and is among the top-three, with Saudi Arabia and Israel, buyers of US weapons.

A return to the past in Kosovo

While Kosovo's "declaration of independence" on Sunday may be feted by those who, like Taiwan, believe in the universal right to the self-determination, there is reason to worry that Pristina's move, accompanied by official recognition by Washington today, could lead to a resumption of violence in the Balkans.

Even though nine years have elapsed since NATO launched its largely ineffective78-day air campaign against Serbia to force it to end its campaign against the breakaway province (Moscow pressure on Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic is what broke the impasse), and despite the fact that during that period the violence there — though not entirely gone — no longer made headlines, the truth of the matter is that none of the proximate causes that led to violence in the 1990s, from social distribution to land claims to grievances to poverty, were resolved by NATO and the UN during that hiatus. Absence of violence, as any political scientist will tell you, by no means signifies absence of conflict. In fact, were it not for the presence of NATO and UN forces on the ground separating Serbs and Kosovars, thus creating an artificial peace, we most assuredly would have seen violence after 1999.

Having failed, just as the Dayton Accord of 1995 ending war in Bosnia and Croatia failed to address the Kosovo issue, to remedy the socio-political underpinnings to the conflict, the international community now finds itself with a problem on its hands: By declaring independence, Kosovo is once again giving the hardline nationalists in Belgrade, along with the many militias that were not disbanded after 1999, renewed arguments to resort to violence. This time around, the UN and NATO could very well find themselves stuck between the two warring factions — in other words, as the very boots on the ground the US and other countries sought to avoid as they limited their "humanitarian" intervention to an air campaign at 15,000 feet in 1999.

Furthermore, having failed to address the strategic foundations to the regional conflict, the declaration on Monday risks driving a wedge in the UN Security Council, with Russia and China on one side and NATO powers on the other, at a time of increasing Sino-Russian-American strain. More distantly, it risks even adding fuel to conflict in the Taiwan Strait, with Taipei recognizing Kosovo while Beijing reiterates its threat against Taiwan should it make a formal move toward independence.

Regardless of whether sovereignty for Kosovo is desirable or not, the failure to choose the appropriate time to do so can only create more problems than were necessary, with many lives in the balance. Should things escalate — as they very well might — the US, NATO and the UN will feel compelled to intervene one way or another, but doing so will further drain the already overstretched alliance, which cannot even manage to produce the force level necessary to deal with the resurgent militants in Afghanistan, which in the past two days suffered its greatest number of civilian casualties since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

Israel's twin dynamics

Syria and Iran announced yesterday that they would conduct a joint investigation into the car bombing on Wednesday that killed top Hezbollah operative Imad Mugniyeh. Given their shared interests in Hezbollah, the conclusions reached by Tehran and Damascus are not difficult to predict — Israel, without or without Washington’s blessing, did it. In other words, this will hardly be an unbiased investigation, or the kind of probe that one would like to see regarding the assassination, three years earlier, of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Myth and conspiracy theories abound in the Middle East, and all of them point to, again, Israel or the US. Although the Mugniyeh assassination bears all the hallmarks of an Israeli hit operation, there might have been some Syrian complicity in the coup, which a serious investigation could uncover but in the present case would most assuredly smother.

What this means, therefore, is that probe or not, all the arrows will point to Israel. And Jerusalem knows this.

Hezbollah has already named Mugniyeh’s successor, but its threat of responding to Israel’s “open war” in kind, anywhere in the world, has yet to materialize. If it did, however, and if Hezbollah were to strike against Israeli interests somewhere in the world, it would be playing right into Israel’s hands.

Two principal dynamics help explain why Israel was likely behind the assassination and why, if it was, it chose to strike when it did.

One is that Israel was humiliated by its incapacity to defeat Hezbollah during its war in Lebanon in July 2006. The pressure within the Israeli defense establishment to “finish the job,” or to exorcize Israel's own "Vietnam Syndrome," cannot be ignored.

The second, as I noted in the Feb. 13 entry on Mugniyeh’s assassination, is that Israel, which has long pushed for a military solution to Iran’s nuclear threat, fears that the findings of the US National Intelligence Estimate have taken the military option off the table. Seeing that intelligence has “failed” it, Israel may well have engineered an act — Mugniyeh’s assassination — that, given Hezbollah’s expected reaction (retaliation), could force the US to come to Israel’s assistance military by targeting the organization's main sponsor.

Put in simpler terms, Israel wants another go at Hezbollah and wants the military option against Tehran back on the table.

The ball is now in Hezbollah’s camp. Given its own domestic pressures, it might be very difficult for the Shiite organization to show restraint this time around.

What Mugniyeh’s assassination means

The assassination of the former head of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization (or Foreign Security Organization), Imad Mugniyeh, in a car bomb in a Damascus suburb yesterday, closes a long chapter in the West’s bloody meddling in the Levant, which began (or some would say resumed) in the early 1980s when the Lebanese Shiite organization was born.

The problem, however, is that the killing will likely open a new, and perhaps bloodier, chapter.

Despite Israel’s denial it had anything to do with the assassination, no other country, not Iran, certainly not the US, has the technical skill and geographical and social access to mount such a targeted operation against the elusive militant, who was believed to be in hiding either in Iran or Lebanon. While Mugniyeh was wanted by Interpol for, among others, his alleged involvement in embassy bombings and abductions in Lebanon in the 1980s, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA aircraft and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, assassination by car bombs is not in the arsenal of the international police organization.

Israel, on the other hand, has long refined the technique of decapitating the leadership of the various organizations arrayed against it, including Hamas (against whose cadres it struck twice in recent years) and Hezbollah, and has made no effort to hide this policy. Interestingly, Mugniyeh’s assassination comes days after Jerusalem announced it could attempt to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza, and three years, almost to the day, after the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005.

But despite the celebrations in Jerusalem, today’s assassination was not vengeance. Rather, it was strategic positioning through an attempt to alter the status quo.

Like Hamas, Hezbollah is sponsored by Tehran, the Jewish state’s No. 1 source of fear, mostly because of the rhetoric of its firebrand leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the belief that Iran seeks to develop nuclear weapons. Ever since a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), released late last year, claimed that Iran had ceased nuclear weaponization efforts in 2003 — thus deflating (though not ending) ongoing efforts to isolate Tehran — Israel, which disagrees with the NIE findings, has shown increasing signs it is willing to go it alone against Iran, perhaps in a repeat of its preventive bombing of a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.

(The presence of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Turkey, Israel’s main regional ally, the same day Mugniyeh was blown to pieces may not have been coincidental either. Despite denying it is so, Turkey would serve as the most logical launch pad for Israeli strikes against Iran.)

Mugniyeh’s assassination will also create additional pressures in Lebanon and risks undermining ongoing efforts to create a stable government there by bolstering the Shiite organization and pro-Syrian factions. Hezbollah, which announced the killing yesterday on its Al-Manar TV station, will very likely retaliate. Expecting this, Jerusalem has put its overseas missions on notice and called for a redoubling of security in preparation for a move by Hezbollah — which may just be what Israel is waiting for, as it would provide it with the justification it needs to launch an attack against Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor. As I have written on many occasions on this site, it’s all connected.

The ashes had barely settled in Beirut following the July 2006 war against Israel than prospects of a renewal of hostilities — especially if Hezbollah renews its rocket attacks against Israeli positions or launches raids from Lebanese territory — seem to have become more likely, if not inevitable.

Involved in many deadly operations during his lifetime, even in death Imad Mugniyeh risks leading to many more.

Cheers for Mr. Spielberg

Renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s announcement today that he was bowing out of his participation in the Beijing Olympics ceremonies is a welcomed development for the human rights movement worldwide. After months of pressure from various rights groups, the director of such movies as Schindler’s List and Empire of the Sun must have realized that the image he had groomed over the years — that of a wise artist embracing such worthy causes as the history of the Holocaust and the personal sacrifices of soldiers during World War II — risked being cast as fraudulent should he become complicit, however indirectly, in the crimes of the Chinese government in Darfur.

Sadly, in his press release Spielberg only focused on Darfur and failed to address the equally serious shortcomings of Beijing on human rights, or its equally nefarious activities in other countries, such as Myanmar. Although the pressure on Spielberg came from groups whose imagination was sparked by images of atrocity in southern Sudan, his credentials as an artist of conscience and role model would have shone even brighter if he had used the occasion to decry the numerous other areas where Beijing clearly fails to act responsibly — including Taiwan — and stated that those shortcomings had also weighed in his decision to cancel his role in the Olympics.

Nevertheless, Spielberg should be commended for his decision. His move will give renewed hope to rights organizations — in China and abroad — that even Beijing, whose official position on the Olympics is one of hardened indifference to criticism, is not exempt from world opprobrium and that individuals can still choose to say no to it.

An artist like Spielberg — the very personalization of Mr. Hollywood, if ever there was one — who depends on the Box Office for his livelihood and who cherishes, not undeservedly, the mantle of morality, Beijing had simply become too radioactive.

Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

Readers may wonder why Afghanistan, seven years after the US and its allies bumped out the Taliban, remains a quasi failed state, where violence, opium and starvation continue to dance with and feed upon one another, or why, after billions of dollars in investment and major contributions by NATO and the UN, it doesn’t seem any closer to falling back on its feet. Of course, the roots of the problem lie in the country’s geography, its limited natural resources and the geopolitical neighborhood it is in, with Pakistan and Iran having long influenced its internal politics.

But a shortcut to understanding the source of the present troubles exists, however, and lies with the soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the subsequent US-led undercover efforts, with Israel, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the coup, to arm the mujahidin with the necessary weapons — mostly surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank weapons — to fight the mighty Soviet army.

The principal character behind this endeavor is Charlie Wilson, a debauched, scotch-breathing congressman from Texas who, simmering in a tub in Las Vegas with buxom strippers, has an epiphany when he sees footage from Afghanistan and wonders what should be done.

What comes next is a descent into the unaccountability of political power, where a single congressman, using his influence on the United States House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, the panel responsible for funding CIA operations, embarks on a mission to double the initial US$5 million US funding to the Afghan resistance. After an eye-opening tour of an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan and a chat, back in Texas, with disgruntled CIA operative named Gust Avrakotos, Wilson plays the levers of power, uses and, in turn, is used by ideological, socialites and wealthy Christian fundamentalist high rollers, to raise funds and increase the amount of money and weapons sent to Afghanistan via Pakistan.

The rest is history — in fact, one of the turning events of modern history. Wilson’s efforts pay dividends and an increasing quantity of soviet helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are shot down with SA missiles, leading to the Soviet withdrawal — its first defeat at the hands of another people — and ultimate implosion. That year, about US$1 billion in military assistance was flowing into Afghanistan, mostly from the US and Saudi Arabia.

Though Charlie Wilson’s War (based on a 2004 book by George Crile, with Tom Hanks playing the role of the congressman and Philip Seymour-Hoffman that of Gust Avrakotos) causes laugher throughout, the humor conceals terrifying truths about a catastrophe in the making, perfectly encapsulated in the unfailingly undiplomatic Avrakotos’ recounting, toward the end, of a Zen master parable of a boy and horse. We may have won the war and defeated the communists, but is it a good thing? We’ll see. As he says this, he hands Wilson a report about the “crazies,” the very fighters Wilson et al had funded for years, who were seizing power in Afghanistan, replacing a bloodbath with another. The dialogue, crude, sarcastic and violent, is done to perfection and can be interpreted at different levels. In one unconfortable scene, Avrakotos tells Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a Jesus-loving, communist-hating Houston socialite who played a major role in Wilson's cause, why the CIA should never mix with politics. When it does, he tells her, he loses sight of who it is he is supposed to be shooting at.

The beauty of the movie is that it doesn’t force its agenda on the viewers, nor does it feel compelled to spell out what the consequences of winning the war in Afghanistan, only to abandon its destitute people, would be for the future. The audience knows that, and pictures of passenger aircraft obliterating the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, would have been unnecessary, if not bad moviemaking.

For those of us who have had a chance (if such a term can be used) to work in intelligence and/or politics (or where the lines intersect), the movie has a special flavor, from Avrakotos’ shouting match in his supervisor’s office (reminiscent of my own altercations) to the mundane operative talk in the CIA cafeteria, from the religious belief in a cause to the myopic view of the consequences and resistance to dissent, all are humorously exposed, and though they draw a laugh, we know too well that the risibility of politics and intelligence also leaves piles of charred bodies by the roadside.

Whatever happens next in Afghanistan, will it be a good thing? We’ll see.

Welcome to Beijing’s world, Malawi

Malawi’s switching relations from Taipei to Beijing on Jan. 14 is already having repercussions on the lives of ordinary Malawians — and not necessarily for the better.

The ink on the new diplomatic relationship hadn’t yet dried when the Chinese ambassador to Uganda, visiting Malawi this week, said that the 26 Malawian students currently studying in Taiwan should be transferred to China. In other words, relations with Beijing now means that Malawian students don’t get to choose where they go; they are ordered by Beijing. Not only does this constitute yet another attempt to humiliate Taiwan — which said that no matter what, the students would be allowed to remain in Taiwan should they choose to do so — but it is also an attempt to “shield” those poor Malawians from the terrible influence of living in a democracy. It would be much safer for them, in Beijing's Orwellian worldview, if they could continue their studies in an authoritarian state where the information they receive and that finds its way into their curriculum is filtered from above.

Meanwhile, whatever benefits that are to be reaped from the new diplomatic ties will remain in the hands of a few back in Malawi and will certainly not trickle down to improve the lives of the ordinary people. For despite the loads of money Beijing is said to have offered Malawi to abandon Taiwan, the former cares not one iota for the welfare of Malawians. The development projects initiated by Taiwan that Beijing claims it wants to take over will become mired in corruption, or will simply be abandoned when — and this is to be expected — Beijing breaks its promises and the money fails to materialize.

For readers of this site who are based in Asia, such developments have nothing unusual about them. At the WHO, for example, Taiwan and its allies are routinely humiliated, repressed and snubbed, and, despite Beijing’s claim to the contrary, the rights of the 23 million Taiwanese ignored.

Readers who are not based in the region, however, may not be aware of this. But little by little, Taiwan’s democracy is getting crushed by Beijing. I have tried, on a few occasions, to raise the issue with publishers in North America — especially at the height of Taiwan’s bid to join the WHO — but absent a regular flow of information on the subject, the interest simply isn’t there. Politics, such as elections, are mentioned briefly in international pages, but the human impact — hell, the health impact — never finds its way in.

More and more it looks like the only way Taiwan can remain an independent democracy will be for the regime in Beijing to be overthrown. Anything less, given the regime’s inflexibility, will likely fail.

The rest of the world must know.

Ironically, a few hours after I made this entry the Nyasa Times, a Malawian newspaper, was reporting the following:

[Malaysian] Minister of Presidential and Parliamentary Affairs Davis Katsonga has angered President Bingu wa Mutharika who has since demanded his immediate return to Malawi and hand back the sweetener he collected from Mainland China. Kastonga is said to have pocketed the “Chinese sweetener” meant for the President for sanctioning [the Dec. 28] diplomatic switch from Taiwan to Beijing, government sources have [said].

Sources at State House said Katsonga, a close ally to Mutharika, has not remitted a substantial amount of money running into billions of Kwachas from the Chinese dragons for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) 2009 general elections. "Honourable Katsonga has angered the President [Mutharika] since his return from China [,] where he signed the memorandum of understanding that established the China-Malawi diplomatic relations."

[…]

The Nation newspaper revealed that Katsonga was on the run [after] he left Malawi on January 16 for the United Kingdom through [the] Malawi-Zambia boarder [sic] […] He is believed to have boarded via Lusaka International Airport the following day.

[…]

[The Malawian] Government has downplayed […] Katsonga’s exit [,] describing it as a private holiday.

[…]

Some observers say they have warned the President and DPP officials to tread carefully in their pursuit for the fruits of the Chinese chequebook diplomacy as Katsonga can reveal damaging secrets in his defense. And [the] Mutharika cabinet has since agreed to damage control the matter, according to sources.

Beyond the kickbacks and rapprochement

The Defense News Web site dropped a bombshell of sorts this week with an article on the possible ramifications of a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) victory in Taiwan’s presidential elections in March. In it, a Taiwanese military official raises the specter of a return to the era of kickbacks — i.e., corruption — in military spending, while a former American Institute in Taiwan official is quoted as saying that rapprochement between the "pro-China" KMT and Beijing could spell the end of major US arms sale to Taipei, as Beijing would be unlikely to perceive the “friendlier” KMT regime with the same amount of animosity it has shown toward the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party government.

While these two scenarios are certainly feasible, the article leaves out a third, equally alarming, possibility: that Washington, perceiving a KMT government to be on the brink of capitulating to Beijing, should not sell Taiwan advanced military equipment lest that technology end up in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). (This fear explains why the US has so far denied Taiwan more advanced aircraft like the F-35 and would instead limit sales to older-generation F16s.) In other words, even if the KMT did not intend to hand over Taiwan “on a platter,” as some analysts have put it, the perception — right or wrong — that Taiwan is headed for “peaceful” annexation via KMT rule would have dire consequences on Washington’s willingness to sell it advanced military technology or even share military intelligence — SIGINT, IMINT, COMINT — with it, something else that was left unaddressed in the Defense News article.

What this means is that even if fears of KMT capitulation turned out to be wrong (and let us pray that this is the case), Taiwan would nevertheless find itself weakened in its defenses, as the US — Taiwan’s only real source of weaponry — would be unwilling to provide it with the equipment, quantitatively and qualitatively, it needs to keep pace with the PLA’s rapid modernization.

All of this, of course, stems from the fact that the end of the Taiwan Strait crisis on Beijing’s “peaceful” terms would by no means mean that US-China competition for regional influence would disappear. Far from it. And with that in mind, the last thing Washington would want is for US-made advanced military technology, transferred from or handed over by Taiwan, to be turned against US soldiers in a future Sino-US armed conflict.

In the end, no matter how one looks at it, a KMT victory in the presidential elections would have catastrophic consequences for Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.

Beijing gains leverage on Canada

If we ever needed an example of the kind of influence Beijing has on the behavior of democratic governments, it was provided last week during Canadian Trade Minister David Emerson’s visit to China. All that trade talk — unaccompanied, of course, by any reference whatsoever to human rights or the environment — culminated when Emerson hinted at the possibility that Ottawa would go to the World Trade Organization to “force” China to allow its citizens to visit Canada as tourists.

“Hinted,” because the last thing Canada wants to do is go to the WTO court against China at a time when bilateral trade between the two countries is at its highest and when China is now tied at No. 3 with Japan as Canada’s largest export market. In making the reference to the WTO while in Beijing, Emerson was telling Beijing Canada took the tourism issue seriously and was hoping for results. But not at the WTO, please.

In other words, Canada went to China as a beggar, kneeling at the throne and willing to sacrifice something in return for a favor by Beijing. When a country threatens to do something but, in the same breath, says it would rather not do it, what it means is that leverage is possible, a weakness can be exploited — and Beijing is a past master at seizing upon such openings in one's armor.

In an article published today in the Taipei Times I explore some of the “sacrifices” Canada may be willing to make so that Beijing will reengage it on the tourism issue. I also warn against the great danger of Beijing coupling trade issues with politics in such a way that democracies risk undermining their principles in the process.

Readers can access the full article, titled “Finding Canada’s Achilles’ heel,” by clicking here

Book Review: Bernard D. Cole's Taiwan's Security

Soon after coming to power in 2000, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) launched a massive reorganization of its defense system, starting with the civilianization of the services, a reorientation of its defense posture and attempts, so far largely unsuccessful, to move from compulsory service toward an entirely volunteer army. Democratization, meanwhile, has imposed restrictions on the military — on budgets, for example — that hitherto had not existed. While in the long run these efforts will likely lead to a more professional and accountable military, the road there can be a difficult one for service members who see their budgets get cut, the number of troops dwindle and their equipment become older.

In isolation, these problems and challenges would not pause an existential threat to the nation. But in Taiwan's situation, with China accelerating the modernization of its military without the barriers set by the checks and balances of a democratic system, this period of reorganization leaves it comparatively weakened and therefore more vulnerable to an attack by China. Furthermore, Taiwan's long guarantor of security, the US, is locked in the Middle East and shows no signs of soon extricating itself from the mess it has created there. This means, among other things, that a US intervention on Taiwan's behalf cannot — and should not — be taken from granted.

All of these, and more, are explored in Bernard D. Cole's Taiwan's Security, which I reviewed in the Taipei Times today. Readers can access the full review by clicking here.

Could this be Tonkin redux in the Strait of Hormuz?

It is much too early to make a formal assessment of the incident early on Sunday in which five suspected Iranian Republican Guards Corps “attack boats” “harassed” US Navy vessels in international waters close to the Strait of Hormuz. But already, as the details trickle in, we can begin to lay out hypotheses.

One element that stands out is the lack of corroborating information and the one-sidedness of the reporting on the incident, with an anonymous source in the Pentagon, a spokesperson and CNN providing the bulk of the story. No coordinates are given to tell us whether the US vessels were clearly in international waters or sufficiently close to Iranian waters as to constitute a provocative act. Furthermore, the transcript of the communications between the Navy and the IRGC vessels — this we must take on faith, as nothing has been provided to prove that these were, indeed, of the IRGC — has not been made public, so it remains impossible to ascertain the nature of the “threatening” language (was it English?) used by the Iranians, which could very well be a mistranslation (if it wasn't English), as has often occurred with speeches by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

News coverage to date has been limited to Reuters and AFP, whose wire copy has been mostly quotes from a report on CNN. Iranian authorities have yet to comment on the matter, and major Middle Eastern media, including al-Jazeera, have nothing on the incident.

So did it really happen? Or is this just a fabrication, or a series of errors and misjudgments, just as occurred in the Gulf on Tonkin in August 1964, which provided the US with the argument it needed to attack North Vietnam? It is also interesting that such an incident would occur amid news that the US may be on the brink of recession. As history has demonstrated, states have an inclination to look abroad whenever trouble brews domestically and to deflect the attention from themselves onto an “enemy.” It is no secret, either, that Washington has for a long time now sought an argument to pound Iran — even after an US intelligence assessment argued that Tehran had long abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

All the above are but hypotheses and may yet be proven wrong as more details are made public. Conspiracy? A warning to George W. Bush as he prepares to visit the region? Fabrication? Blunder? At the moment, all are possible. But this one has all the hallmarks of a US administration that once again is asking us to trust it.

Stay tuned.

Irresponsible fearmongering at the NSB

As if the build-up to the presidential election next year were not chaotic enough, National Security Bureau (NSB) chief Shi Hwei-yow (許惠祐) revealed last week that the bureau had become aware of a “threat” against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). In and of itself, there was nothing wrong with the revelation — except that it was altogether irresponsible of the NSB to make the information public before it had completed an assessment of the credibility of the threat by so-called “radical elements.”

Intelligence services the world over prepare what are formally known as “threat assessments” — reports, based on intelligence collected from various sources, that address threats to, among others, the security of the nation, its citizens at home and abroad, critical infrastructure, the economy, visiting foreign diplomats and the domestic political leadership.

Part of the responsibilities of analysts involved in the preparation of threat assessments is to sift through the daunting quantity of material that comes their way, from undigested, or “raw,” intelligence to assessments provided by agencies both domestic and foreign. The secluded world in which these analysts operate — after all, their very purpose of the unit is to think of threats — makes the task of telling signal from noise an onerous one at best.

This is why dependable threat assessments are based on “threat matrices,” which take both “threat” and “risk” into consideration, as well as whether the information regarding the threat is “single thread” — from one source alone — or has been corroborated by other means, such as human sources, signals intelligence and intercepts. The reliability of the source(s) is factored into the final evaluation, which, under their different guises, usually provide a “threat level” (e.g., a scale of one to 10, or “low,” “medium,” “high”) or an assessment of probability.

As a responsible and professional intelligence service, we can expect that the NSB goes through a similar process before it delivers a threat assessment to its customers in government. But in this instance, to openly discuss a threat in such a way that it becomes public — the news appeared in newspapers the very next day — before all the necessary steps involved in the production of a threat assessment have been made (“We are evaluating whether [the threats] are real,” Shi said on Monday) is either the result of gross incompetence or the willful utilization of fear to exacerbate tensions in an already charged political environment.

Government transparency is welcome and there should be more of it. But sensitive information such as a possible threat to assassinate a political figure should be handled with caution and should never be shared before its veracity has been ascertained. After all, threat assessment units receive, on a daily basis, dozens if not hundreds of leads, most of which turn out to be groundless, noise, and thus duly discarded.

But such malpractice is not without its precedents. For some time after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, global intelligence agencies, in their renewed sense of siege, tended to seize on every threat and to report them before their credibility had been assessed. That practice eventually tapered off as the credibility of the Cassandras broadcasting the threats to both government and the public came under question. Facing the very real risk of numbing clients to the possibility of credible threats in future, those agencies had no choice but to become a little more discerning in what they would share.

We can perhaps forgive the NSB and other security agencies for being in a heightened sense of awareness as the elections approach, but if they want to retain their utility and avoid needlessly draining finite resources, they must refrain from feeding noise to the government and the public and not cry wolf before the semblance of a howl has been heard.

The NSB wasn't at fault over '101gate'

Although security at Taipei 101 may have been put to shame by Austrian base jumper Felix Baumgartner's successful — albeit uninvited — spectacular* on Tuesday, people and the media have made too much of the event. After all, no one was hurt, Toyota received more publicity than it could ever have hoped for when it placed its circular ads on the tower, and everybody has had a good laugh. Except, perhaps, the National Security Bureau (NSB), which has been accused of failing to catch the man before he could flee the country on a flight to Hong Kong. "If the NSB can't put its fingers on an individual who commits such an ostentatious act, how can it ever unmask the much more secretive spies Beijing has dispatched to Taiwan?" they ask.

At face value, the argument would seem to be a sensible one, were it not for the fact that it bespeaks a total lack of understanding of how security intelligence actually works.

First of all, about two hours after he jumped off Taipei 101, Baumgartner was boarding an aircraft for Hong Kong. As the stunt was unannounced, the authorities had no a priori knowledge and could not possibly have mobilized their forces in time to intercept him at the airport. Like any other government institution, the NSB is not meant to react quickly to events; in other words, before it can commit to a course of action, a long and slow process of decision-making involving a number of people of different ranks has to be completed. (This may seem counterintuitive, but all the red tape is there to prevent rash decisions and provide the necessary paper trail should something go wrong during an operation.)

Following upon that is the fact that — again like any other government institution — the NSB has a finite budget and limited resources, which means that to maximize performance it must prioritize. The belief that intelligence services "see and know everything" is nothing but a myth perpetuated by US genre movies. In reality, they can be surprisingly blind when it comes to "threats" that emanate from outside their pre-selected areas of focus. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, sadly, were a deadly demonstration of that.

Now, given the regional context, it shouldn't be too difficult to imagine what the NSB's priorities would be: Chinese espionage and, perhaps, various proliferation-related issues involving North Korea and Iran. As such, a great proportion of its resources, both human and electronic, would be aimed at serving those needs.

What the NSB probably isn't looking at, however, are Austrians, who pose no threat whatsoever to the security of Taiwan — even less so the type that seeks nothing other than to wow the public and get an adrenaline rush in the process.

In light of this — a "target" of no priority and a slow chain of command inherent to government institutions — it is perfectly understandable for Baumgartner to have managed to slip through the fingers of the authorities once he had committed his stunt.

The NSB and police authorities can be faulted for a number of things, but on this one, they certainly don't deserve the criticism they have received and the nation would be in much greater danger if they did, indeed, target the Baumgartners of this world, however irresponsible their deeds might be.

* Baumgartner managed to smuggle a parachute past Taipei 101 security and jumped off the building.

The many whys behind the ‘Kitty Hawk’ incident

In “The method in Beijing’s madness,” an article I published today in the Taipei Times, I explore the number of reasons why Beijing may have decided last month to deny entry into Hong Kong harbor to a series of US sea vessels. While most of the analysis to date has either focused on Beijing seeking to send the US “a message” regarding its displeasure with Washington selling Taipei military equipment or on the leadership being somehow “irrational,” I propose that rather than the latter, Beijing’s decision was based on Realist calculations of balance of power with the ultimate aim — one it has stated repeatedly in recent years — of forcing the US out of the region.

There is no small irony in the fact that on this incident defense analysts and political pundits, all raised on Kissingerian Realism, have mostly failed to make that point in their assessments.

Readers can access the full article by clicking here

(Note: References to Taro Aso in the article should instead have read former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. My apologies for the error.)

“A blow below the belt”

The issuance on Monday of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a consensus document involving the 16 intelligence agencies in the US, arguing that, based on evidence, Tehran had very likely ended its nuclear weapon program in 2003 came as a bit of a surprise. More so, it gave one hope that the US intelligence community hasn’t entirely become politicized.

But for those who are now crossing their fingers and hoping the document will prevent sanctions or military action against Iran, cautious skepticism might be in order. Not 24 hours after its release, Israeli officials and the press were attacking the report, calling it “a blow below the belt.” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak even said that despite the findings (but providing no evidence whatsoever), Iran “has probably since revived it [its nuclear weapons program].” As deplorable was US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley’s almost immediate public interpretation of the NIE, which with Orwellian skill he managed to portray as meaning that Tehran must continue to be pressured, isolated and threatened, thus leaving the door open for further sanctions and even military action, although for the moment it would be more difficult to argue for the latter.

In an op-ed piece titled The Iranian test of possibility on Wednesday, Ha’aretz demonstrated Israel’s irrational streak whenever Iran is concerned by, among other things, dissecting the difference between the terms “high certainty” and “moderate confidence” used in the NIE and arguing that a 10 percent chance that Iran would develop an atomic weapon by 2009 may not mean much to the bigger and distant US but makes a world of a difference for smaller and more proximate Israel. The article then puts the entire US intelligence community into doubt by hinting that it once again has been deceived by Iranian “pranks.” The author uses a number of examples, including failure by the US to punish Iran for the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, to make this point. Ironically, by using this example the author underscores his own politicization of intelligence, as it has never been proven with “high certainty” that Tehran had anything to do with the bombing, which in fact intelligence organizations (including Israel's) have, depending on political needs of the time, also blamed on the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Saudi Hezbollah (not connected to the former) and al-Qaeda. It would seem that when it comes to defending oneself against accusations, Ha’aretz will lower its standards and just cannot be bothered with distinctions between “high certainty” and “moderate confidence.”

The op-ed then commends Bush for his commitment to “preventive action” and not “passive[ly] waiting for the enemy to give in.” In other words, Bush, the article says, will likely continue on his mission to isolate Iran despite the shackles of intelligence, and moreover he will receive all the help (and pressure) he needs from Israel. That pressure, in turn, will result in part from Israel’s own failure to distinguish between “threat” and “risk” assessment and to fashion its policies accordingly.

During my years at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), I had a “chance” to read many reports by the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) and Israel's domestic agencies. In every case, the failure to weigh “threat” against “risk” always struck me. The documents would be marred by a lack of criticism that turned what should have been an apolitical product (the very nature of intelligence) into a policy statement. In other words, rather than provide the raw data upon which CSIS could make its own assessment, Mossad was prescribing action and doing so in a way that prevented critical thinking. We can expect that in the wake of the NIE, US and intelligence services worldwide will soon be bombarded by “intelligence” from Israel, which in and of itself constitutes a political statement. For those of us who have already forgotten, this is exactly what Israel did when US interest in striking Iraq prior to 2003 was perceived to be flagging; the Israel lobby shifted into high gear and the intelligence started pouring in. Immediately after the Saddam Hussein regime had fallen, Jerusalem embarked on a relentless program to pressure the US and its allies into taking action against Tehran.

By focusing on the “threat” and ignoring the diminished risk, no matter what Tehran does (or is said to have done, as the NIE just did), Jerusalem will always cry foul. If this leads to further sanctions and isolation of Tehran — or, though less likely, in independent Israeli military strikes in Iran — good behavior, rather than be encouraged by engagement and reciprocity, will instead lead to punitive action, which in the long run can only but create a self-fulfilling prophecy and compel Tehran to go down the nuclear path. No good can come out of a “damned if you don’t, damned if you do” treatment of Iran.

On condition of anonymity

In an article published in the Taipei Times today, I look at the factors behind the growing presence of "anonymous sources" in today's news — a trend that, since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, is now threatening the very foundations of newsmaking.

Tracing its origins to the Vietnam War, I find two principal themes that could explain this new phenomenon — new in the sense that its use is now customary — (a) lack of protection for government dissidents and corporate whistleblowers; and (b) a growing reliance by governments on secrecy and deniability.

I conclude by arguing that the use of secrecy, of which anonymous sources are but a new expression, is adding distance between governments and the people and making it more difficult for people to make their own informed judgments about events.

Readers can access the full article by clicking here.

Language and the Middle East 'peace' talks

Readers of this Web site are by now aware that an issue I keep revisiting is that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, partly as a result of my past profession but also because how the media reports on it epitomizes how language creates our reality, something that has long been an interest of mine. Another reason why I often come back to this particular conflict is that, as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt so aptly put it in their quite useful The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, as a purported Western democracy, Israel should be judged by higher moral standards than the supposed “radicals” and “extremists” and “terrorists” who oppose it.

The fact that it is not, that the media and the Jewish state’s Western allies continue to give it a moral carte blanche no matter what, underscores the reason why the new round of “peace” talks in Annapolis is, as the Palestinian “radicals” put it, “doomed to failure.”

The Associated Press wire agency, whose reporting I have dissected in previous postings, continues to systematically editorialize its news on the conflict. As AP is carried by newspapers the world over and its credibility assumed by most, how it represents the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bound to influence — oftentimes subconsciously — people’s understanding of the issue. AP’s bias, constant though it is, doesn’t stem from a Zionist plot or a deliberate attempt to demonize Palestinians. Rather, it is symptomatic of a Western way of storytelling, in which there must be a “good” party and a “bad” one. The latter has all the mysteriousness and irrationalism of religion and violence attached to it, the “unknown” that creates fear among the civilized “us.”

A perfect example of this can be found in AP’s coverage of the demonstrations yesterday against the Middle East "peace" conference in Annapolis. The story, datelined Gaza City, opens with “Tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip demonstrated Tuesday against the Middle East peace conference in the US,” then spends the next 25 of 27 paragraphs describing Palestinian violence, threats of the “destruction of Israel” by Hamas and crowds chanting “death to America,” and so on.

Only the last two paragraphs — two out of the story’s total 28 — describe Israeli opposition to the peace talks, stating that “[m]ore than 20,000” Israelis gathered to demonstrate against the talks and that “hard-line” (a more neutral term that also conveys a sense of being part of the ‘acceptable’ political spectrum) opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu had “denounced” the conference.

The imbalance could not be any more stark. Ninety-two point five percent of the story focuses on “militants” using “vitriolic” language to attack the “peace” talks, even quoting a 37-year-old Palestinian mother of eight, “[d]ressed in a black robe and black and green headband,” (again, sustaining the image of the unknown, which otherwise does not serve any journalistic purpose) who adds that the failure of the talks “will be an advantage for the resistance.” Only 7.5 percent of AP’s report addresses Israeli opposition to the talks, and furthermore readers are given a more precise number of demonstrators — more than 20,000 — than what we are told about Palestinians, which is no more precise than in the “tens of thousands,” a convenient quantity blur that encourages the view of swarms of irrational Palestinians against the more scientific, knowable Israelis.

Why couldn’t AP open its story with a Jerusalem dateline and represent the two demonstrations with more balance, perhaps by quoting Israelis who use a language of intolerance as "radical” as that used by the Palestinians quoted in the story? By failing to do this and by disproportionately reporting on Palestinian demonstrations, the latter are once again portrayed as opposing peace. If and when the talks in Annapolis fail — for they will — it will once again be the Palestinians who are blamed, irrespective of the fact that it is quite apparent that, like all its predecessors, the Israeli leadership is coming to the negotiating table less than willing to make the concessions that would open the way for a viable Palestinian state.

‘Brothers so sorely tired’

The Red Cross and the Red Crescent estimate that 900,000 Bangladeshi families are in immediate need of humanitarian assistance and that between 5,000 and 10,000 people were killed by Cyclone Sidr last week (at this writing, the official death toll stands at above 3,000). On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI appealed for international solidarity and to “help these brothers so sorely tired.” Given the severity of the situation, one would think that Dhaka is hardly in a position to turn down assistance from anyone who offers.

And yet, that is just what it did.

It is true that numerous countries, including the US, Japan, China, Canada, Kuwait, Germany and the EU, have already either sent aid or have promised to do so, and some, like Saudi Arabia, have made well-publicized offers of not insubstantial amounts of money for relief assistance, while the Islamic Conference has called on its 57-member body to send urgent aid. All must have been welcomed with open arms by Bangladeshi authorities.

Taiwan, too, has offered aid, via its representative office in Dhaka, but Bangladeshi authorities have refused to acknowledge the offer, giving as a reason the fact that the two countries do not have official diplomatic ties — the usual euphemism for one’s reluctance to deal with Taiwan because of the likelihood that doing so would anger the backdoor bully Beijing (China has pledged US$1 million in emergency assistance to Bangladesh).

Although this time round Taiwan’s offer came via Taiwan International Health Action, a governmental organization under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rather than through NGOs — thus making accepting the offer a little more complicated — one would think that in a time of great need such as now, capitals would put politics aside and genuinely focus on the needs of their people. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case and a wealthy country in a good position to offer immediate help when it is needed most — now, when lives can be saved — is being told to stay home.

History has taught us that pledges of humanitarian aid following a natural catastrophe rarely translate into the full sum promised, and oftentimes the bureaucratic process adds layers of red tape — and precious days — to the actual delivery of aid on the ground. In other words, the millions of dollars that countries have pledged in recent days will not all end up where they are needed, and some of that help will arrive late. As such, there is no such a thing as too much on offer, and all help should be welcome.

I’m pretty sure Bangladeshis wouldn’t mind Taiwanese money, blankets or food and would probably even risk Beijing’s "wrath" when everything around them has been turned into a devastation zone, or “a valley of death,” as one relief worker put it, with water-borne diseases and the promise of more deaths lurking just on the horizon.

Our moral nakedness: a response

Adar Primor’s piece in the Nov. 6 edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz does a good job analyzing the underlying strategy of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) bid to join the United Nations under the name “Taiwan.” Primor is fully aware that Chen’s chances of success in this endeavor are, at least on the surface, rather quite slim, as Taiwan is confronted to the harsh realities of Realpolitik and “international hypocrisy.”

Beyond the attempt itself, however, Primor sees a second — and perhaps even more important — bid to expose the moral nakedness of the international community, which continues to deny “the freest country in Asia” the place it deserves under the sun. Primor spares no one; the US, European countries, even Israel, the author says, have been “going with the flow,” meaning that China’s lure trumps the so-called “shared” values that, as he rightly puts it, are by no means reflected in the Chinese leadership.

Sadly, the author concludes with a flawed analogy by comparing Taiwan with Israel, “two small and effervescent ‘real democracies’ engaged in their own security-existential troubles, exposed to threats from a huge external enemy and dependent on American protection and aid.” Foreign editor at Haaretz, a newspaper with a long, enviable tradition of even-handed reporting on Israeli politics (see Amira Haas’ clear-eyed columns on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, for example), Primor should know better than to equate Taiwan’s struggle for survival with Israel’s, as the “David of the Far East,” as he puts it, does not face “a huge external enemy” because of its long history of colonialism and military adventurism, at least not since dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) left the scene.

Unlike Israel, Taiwan does not threaten its neighbors, does not invade their airspace or bomb capital cities back to the stone age. Nor does it hold millions hostage in Apartheid-like submission — all misguided policies that (a) most Israelis do not agree with and (b) are largely responsible for that “huge external enemy” in the first place. Beijing denies the very existence of Taiwan; most Arabs do not deny Israel’s right to exist and those who do certainly do not have the means to bring about such a reality. If it wanted, Beijing could raze Taiwan to the ground (It would help if Israel stopped selling military technology to China). Conversely, given its tremendous military (largely the result of US “carte blanche” military transfers and billions in annual aid, as well as its nuclear arsenal), it is Israel, what with its unconditional support from Washington, that is in a position, if it wanted, to annihilate its enemies — not the other way around.

What this means, therefore, is that no policy “correction” on Taipei’s part would bring about a cessation of hostilities. No matter what it does, Beijing will continue to threaten it — at least as long as it struggles for sovereignty. With a corrective in how it manages its conflict both with Palestinians and its neighborhood, Israel can appease “Goliath,” fix its “security-existential struggle” and sideline the remaining lunatics who call for its destruction.

Primor’s piece is a most welcome one that shows Chen’s efforts to publicize Taiwan’s cause are not in vain. But by conflating Taiwan’s struggle with that of Israel, sadly, he undermines the power of his argument.

In fairness to the author, I subsequently learned that the “David of the Far East” analogy was picked up by Mr. Primor during his interviews with Taiwanese and, furthermore, that it is often used by Chinese-language media in Taiwan. As I argue above, this analogy not only misinterprets the roots of Israel's security challenge but, ironically, misrepresents the underlying causes of Taiwan's predicament.

To war, one step at a time

The timing of the Interpol general assembly voting on whether to put five Iranians and a Lebanese on “red” notice — the international police agency’s “most wanted” list — suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires (seen left) could not be more conspicuous, coming as it does at a time when the US and some of its allies are putting unprecedented pressure on Tehran to cease its alleged military nuclear work. Despite Interpol’s assertion that the decision to vote on the matter was not, as Tehran alleges, the result of pressure from Washington (or Israel), one wonders why the agency, which has had 13 years since the bombing, would decide to act now, knowing fully well that doing so will only add fuel to an already dangerously unstable political brew.

To its merit, Tehran decided to abandon trying to block the vote, but irrespective of that decision, the vote confronts it to a lose-lose situation, in which (a) refusal would give the impression it is trying to hide something, that it supports terrorism or is simply a “rogue” international actor, while (b) the responsibilities attendant to the “red” notices could result in pressure to arrest or hand over the suspects in Iran (although states are not obligated to do so).

Whether the decision to hold the vote (a majority suffices) was indeed the result of political pressure remains to be determined, but regardless, its timing could not have been worse. Not only will this further isolate Iran at a time when it needs to be embraced, but the sixth suspect, Imad Mugniyeh (right), also happens to have intimate ties to the Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally and sometimes proxy of Tehran. Given the instability in Lebanon — fueled by the US/Israel/Syrian power play there as well as internal sectarian fault lines — pressure on the Lebanese government to hand over Mugniyeh (although he is unlikely to be in Lebanon) or on Iran to do so would inevitably result in linkage and thereby render both the Iranian "nuclear" problem and the Lebanese one all the more unsolvable.

By accident or design, independent decision or one brought about by pressure, the decision at this specific point in time to target those six suspects takes us ever closer, down the long succession of small things adding up, to war with Iran.